Kevin Spacey went on Bill Maher‘s Club Random podcast this week and Maher was characteristically blunt from the get-go.
“I’m not going to lie to you, I go by numbers with scandals,” began Maher. “If it’s like one person, I’m always like, ‘I don’t know if I wasn’t in the room.’ When it gets to like you had, it’s like, ‘Come on man, there’s too much smoke to be no fire.’”
Spacey didn’t deny that.
“I never said there was no fire. It just wasn’t a raging forest fire. It was a small kitchen fire that could have been put out with an extinguisher,” he replied.
Spacey has always denied all allegations he did anything illegal. A 2023 trial in London saw him cleared of nine charges including sexual assault, which were alleged to have been committed between 2001 and 2013 and related to four men. Spacey was previously found not liable in a U.S. civil case brought by actor Anthony Rapp, who alleged Spacey molested him when he was 14.
In March, Spacey agreed to a settlement with three men who accused him of sexual assault. The civil case was due to go to trial in London later this year but has been frozen due to the settlement, which did not disclose a figure or reveal further details.
The Oscar winner admitted to Maher he was no shrinking violet.
“I hit on a lot of guys,” said Spacey. “There are certain cases where part of something is true, but it’s been rethought, it’s been redesigned, or it’s been entirely made up, certainly in the case of Anthony Rapp, which is a case that we won in federal court in New York.”
Despite that, Spacey said, “I was fiercely closeted. I didn’t want anyone to know anything about me and of course I thought I was so clever that no one knew.”
But they did, he says. And they talked.
“There was so many stories about me. There was lots of talk about that I was gay and I just wasn’t out and rather than the gay community understanding that…I always felt that I was being attacked.”
Referring to Spacey’s difficulty getting roles since 2017, Maher said, “A 10-year sentence is a serious sentence.”
The actor replied, “I feel less in jail than I did. When people actually start to hear the facts, understand what we won in courts, I think people now look at this and think, ‘Maybe nine years has been enough.’”
